William Fitzhugh's significance derives from his 215 letters, some speeches, his will, and a few miscellaneous documents, which together yield a wealth of information on seventeenth-century Virginia. His letters reflect his interlocking occupations of lawyer, businessman, and gentleman-farmer, and, as a group, parallel and may surpass those of William Byrd I, the only other extensive epistolary collection of that time and place, in giving a detailed picture of day-to-day plantation life. In addition to presenting the best physical description of a seventeenth-century plantation, these letters tell the story of the growth of the early economic and governmental systems of Virginia and document as well Fitzhugh's emergence as a local leader and his founding of a prominent Virginia family.

William, the youngest child of Henry Fitzhugh, a wealthy woolen draper, was born in Bedford, England, and baptized on 10 January 1651. Little is known of his early life. Already a lawyer when...